Workstation registration can be used to manage a plurality of client devices coupled to a network (e.g., servers, workstations, etc.). Device registration may provide information regarding a particular device, a user of the device, or other information. To enable registration on the network, importation services may import information regarding a server or a workstation to register a device. Importing device information typically only occurs once, where the importation service initially creates a representation of a device to identify the device in a network system. For example, the representations could include device objects, database records, or any other suitable data structure or abstraction for representing workstations, servers, or other devices. Further, the device representations could be used various network systems, including a network tree implementation (e.g., a tree data structure or other abstraction) composed of the device objects, a database containing the records, or any other suitable system for managing and representing devices connected over the network. Upon creating an appropriate representation of a device, the importation service would then populate the management abstraction (e.g., database, network tree, etc.) using default values, and subsequently update device properties with current registration information.
Unlike device importation, device registration typically occurs when a manager program starts up, a user logs-in to a device management system, or a user logs-out of the device management system. Device registration typically includes a client device registering information about the device, a system administrator registering the device by importing the device information, and notifying the device that the registration has been processed. The device may then verify the registration and record a name assigned to the device. These types of existing systems typically require multiple steps and intervention by a plurality of users, increasing communications over the network and potentially creating bottlenecks, among other problems.
Other problems with existing registration systems relate to assigning rights for performing tasks. For example, task rights may be assigned to a server container, but such implementations may grant permissions based on broad classes or representations of devices. Thus, some devices may be granted undesired authorizations to perform particular tasks due to limitations of systems used to represent and manage devices. Furthermore, when a network organization includes a large number of devices and/or users (e.g., various user types, workstation types, etc.), existing systems often fail to provide adequate measures for easily managing task rights, deploying software updates, or otherwise managing similar classes of devices and/or users.
Existing systems suffer from these and other problems.